Google Maps Easter Egg Lets You Explore The TARDIS

Gasp! I would’ve had this post written 20 minutes ago, but I was too busy geeking the hell out.

Tucked away in a single streetview image of what appears to be a mere police box, a newly discovered Google Maps easter egg lets you go inside the TARDIS.

(If you don’t know what the TARDIS is, come on.)

How to do it:

• Click this link
• Move your mouse around a bit. The standard Google Maps directional arrows should pop up, with one little addition: a pair of double arrows. Click those. (Note: If you’re enrolled in the new Google Maps UI beta, the arrows might not appear. Instead, hit the up arrow on your keyboard. Thanks for the heads up on this trick)
• Bam! You should now be in the TARDIS’ bigger-on-the-inside (smaller-on-the-outside) interior.

I figured it’d just be a single, static shot, but no: you can click all around the control room, complete with StreetView’s signature panoramas, navigating all the way down below the main platform for a glimpse at the heart of the TARDIS itself. You don’t seem to be able to click into any of the hallways — that’s probably for the better, really, as we don’t want any of you getting lost.

Can’t find your way in? Look for these arrows:

Man, I wish I had something like this back when I was building my AR TARDIS. While I based the innards of mine on the last generation control room, figuring out how everything fit together in the interior from one-off set shots and screengrabs alone was… a bit of a pain.

(Note: Word is that this easter egg doesn’t always work in the new Google Maps interface, which many of you have likely opted into by now. No problem — just open the link in Chrome’s incognito mode [or whatever your browser's private browsing mode might be called] and you should be back at the old Google Maps interface without requiring you to tweak any settings or log out of Google.)